The Long and the Short Of It
by valentine
Summary: "Do you think I was wrong?" (Jed and Josh missing scene from H. Con. 172)


Title: The Long and the Short Of It  
  
Author: valentine  
  
Rating: pg  
  
Summary: "Do you think I was wrong?" (Jed and Josh missing scene from H. Con. 172)  
  
Feedback: Always appreciated at graciepuppy@msn.com  
  
Thanks to N. for the quick beta and for always helping me not to embarrass myself…too much.  
  
  
  
The Long and the Short Of It  
  
Josh left Leo sitting in the mess; uneasy with how things had been left. Taking the deal was the right thing. But Leo was stubborn and loyal, both to a fault at times. Josh found himself wishing again that Toby were on the inside on this one. Even Sam or CJ would be better. Someone with some distance, someone not Josh. But it was him and it was Leo and the only person left to play a part in this was President Bartlet. So it didn't surprise Josh when he found himself outside the Oval Office at one in the morning.  
  
"Charlie does he have a minute?" Josh asked, wondering again how the young man managed to get anything, let alone school, worked into his insane schedule.  
  
"Hang on, let me check."  
  
He watched Charlie enter the office before he picked up a few loose paper clips and began tossing them idly from one hand to the other. He had no idea how he was supposed to do this. It wasn't as though he didn't advise the President everyday. But this, like everything else to do with the MS, had an air of untouchability. From the decision to go public to the announcement for the reelection bid he'd felt shut out. And it was no secret that the rest of the Senior Staff did as well. There was nothing about this that any of them could fix easily and it was eating at them each in their own way. He couldn't just go to The Hill and yell at some Junior Congressman and set everything right this time. He couldn't even bring himself to really argue with Leo over it. And certainly he couldn't yell at the President, again, but maybe he could persuade him that taking the deal and ending it was the best thing.  
  
"He's just finishing up a call. You can go on in," Josh had been so lost in his thoughts that Charlie's voice startled him.  
  
"Thanks."  
  
Sometimes it amazed him that the Oval Office could still intimidate him. He suspected it had something to do with the big seal in the carpet, although he was willing to admit that Josiah Bartlet frightened him in a way that previously only his father could manage. Trying not to listen to the President's side of the conversation with one ear, Josh occupied himself with the yellowed paper covering a corner of the desk.  
  
"Yes, good, okay, good night." Jed sighed heavily, relieved to have that phone call out of the way. Quickly he turned his attention to the younger man. "What can I do for you Josh?"  
  
"Evening, Mr. President. That's a nice map." Josh motioned to the desk, hopefully buying another moment to organize his plan of attack.  
  
"Isn't it! And wouldn't it look grand hanging out there, just above Charlie's desk."  
  
"No."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Sir..."  
  
"Yeah, okay, fine. Phili-stines all!"  
  
"I thought it was phili-steens."  
  
"Are you correcting my pronunciation?"  
  
"No, sir, absolutely not."  
  
"Good, because if you'd bother to look it up you'd see that it can be pronounced with both the long e *and* the long i. Being a man of great couth I prefer the lesser known but more distinguished long i."  
  
"Actually, it's either the long e or the *short* i."  
  
"No. Are you sure?" Jed's voice contained all the indignation and disbelief he could muster.  
  
"Pretty sure."  
  
"Charlie!"  
  
Josh was careful to hide his smirk from the President as the young man came into the room.  
  
"Yes, sir?"  
  
"I need you to look up the correct pronunciation of philistine, for me."  
  
"Sir?"  
  
"Philistine. And bring it here when you've got it please."  
  
"Yes sir." Charlie backed out of the office wondering how it was that he got assigned dictionary duty.  
  
Jed slowly turned back to the Deputy Chief of Staff; "well we'll just see who's right about this, even though we both know it's not you."  
  
"Ahkay." Josh conceded for the moment, knowing from experience that an argument would just turn out badly for him. Badly in the -all night discourse on phonetic versus vernacular pronunciations and their relative strengths- kind of way.  
  
"Now, what did you need?  
  
"I wanted to talk to you about the hearings."  
  
Jed looked harder at his Deputy Chief of Staff and had to admit to himself that he wasn't at all surprised. Josh, after all, was the one that looked after Leo that night. He was as much involved in this as any of them.  
  
"You know about the deal?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Good...talk to me about censure."  
  
"Toby and Sam would argue against, they'd say it's bad timing. Writing the State of The Union is hard enough without this around our necks. Press wise, it has the potential to eclipse anything good we do in the next month at least."  
  
"But you don't agree."  
  
Josh gripped the back of the chair in front of him and bowed his head. He'd seen both sides of this argument and wavered somewhere in the middle. If it hadn't been for Leo he would most certainly side with the communications staff. But it was Leo and helping him had somehow become more important. But in thinking about it Josh was forced to admit it wasn't at all mysterious how they'd arrived in this place. Leo had saved his life, more literally than he was comfortable remembering, and this was small repayment.  
  
"No sir. I think you should take the offer."  
  
"Why? Give me reasons."  
  
"It gets it over and done, keeps it from being dragged through the primaries. And I think doing it now, before the speech, gives us a good opportunity to get some real numbers."  
  
"What if we were to wait, just till after the State of The Union?"  
  
"We're not going to have this chance again, Mr. President. Right now, right here we can control the timing and the outcome. And later...later it may not end in censure."  
  
"Impeachment."  
  
"Yeah. This will end it. And if you chose to continue with the hearings when they're done with Leo...it'll be The First Lady. It'll be Liz and Ellie and Zoey."  
  
"I'm afraid my wife will still have to face the AMA."  
  
"Yes sir, but let's not give them the hearings as fodder. Lower the profile."  
  
Jed nodded and saw the other reason written plainly on Josh's face. The other man cared for his family Jed knew but he cared for Leo in a way that far surpassed all that. Josh was less than forthcoming though, and forced Jed to ask the question, "and?"  
  
"And...it keeps him from testifying."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Jed stared across the room at his Chief of Staff's door and wondered how it was that Leo would sacrifice himself so willingly. He wondered again how he'd ended up earning such loyalty. Turning from the door he watched as Josh shifted nervously from one foot to the next, obviously not done sharing his thoughts.  
  
"What else?"  
  
"Sir, he thinks you shouldn't take the thing because he doesn't think *you'll* come out on the other side."  
  
"What do you think?"  
  
"I think you're the President of The United States and this won't stop people from remembering that, and remembering why they voted for you in the first place." Josh paused to run a hand through his unruly hair. "But he won't recover from this. He'll be crucified. His career here will be over. You'll be forced to ask him to resign."  
  
"We got through it last time, we got through the Sierra Tuscon disclosure."  
  
"Yeah, but this...People let that slide because they thought he made good on treatment. They're a lot less understanding about relapses."  
  
"I know," Jed said, mostly under his breath, remembering his own reaction when he'd found out. "Okay, anything else?"  
  
"No, sir." Josh turned to leave and was almost to the door when the President spoke.  
  
"Do you think I was wrong?"  
  
"Mr. President..." Josh turned, not sure where the question had come from.  
  
"No, I'm asking. Do you think I was wrong?"  
  
"I think...I think you should have told us. From the very beginning, you should have told us."  
  
"And what, you would've spun it, turned it all around and upside down?"  
  
"Maybe, maybe not. Either way I think we should have been given the chance to start on a level playing field."  
  
"I really wasn't supposed to win, you know."  
  
"Then the question becomes if you didn't think you'd win they why bother to conceal this?"  
  
"Because I wanted to win."  
  
"This" Josh waved his arm up and down, drawing an imaginary circle around Bartlet, "wouldn't have stopped us from getting you here."  
  
Jed chuckles, "Leo said that to me when he found out."  
  
"Leo's a smart guy."  
  
"Yeah. Some days more than others, huh?"  
  
Josh smiled at the President but said nothing.  
  
"You know Toby was in here earlier quoting "The Lion in Winter" to me."  
  
"Uhhh...with Audrey Hepburn and uh Peter..."  
  
"Peter O'Toole, yes. You know it?"  
  
"We've screened it a minimum of four times since you took office."  
  
"Have I mentioned how much I love having my very own theatre?!"  
  
"Yes, sir, several times."  
  
"Do you know what Toby said to me?"  
  
"'There'll be pork in the treetops by morning'?"* Josh asked. Although 'We could tangle spiders in the webs you weave' had been his immediate thought, he bit it back quickly. The web they found themselves in was as much their own doing as his. Each had his or her own past, indiscretions and secrets that, added together, bound them.  
  
"No," Jed couldn't contain his laughter, but sobered quickly, "although we could use some of that particular sentiment around here. 'Stout hearts banding together'"*  
  
"We're fine, Mr. President, they're fine. Just, just none of us are that comfortable being on the outside."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"So what did Toby say?"  
  
"He said that when the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal. I think he was trying to tell me something, though he denies it."  
  
"I can't imagine Toby presuming to tell you anything Mr. President." Josh ducked his head, amusement clear in his features.  
  
"Indeed," Jed smiled as he turned back to his desk, "you're going home now." It was clearly a dismissal and an order.  
  
"Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President."  
  
"Josh."  
  
The younger man turned, his face questioning.  
  
"Never mind. Good night."  
  
"Good night, sir."  
  
Jed watched Josh exit his office and thought, not for the first time, that someday the he'd make one hell of a Chief of Staff.  
  
"Sir?'  
  
"What did you find, Charlie?"  
  
"Well according to The American Heritage College Dictionary it can be pronounced phili-steens, with the long e, or phili-stins with the short i."  
  
"I'll be damned."  
  
"Sir?"  
  
"Yeah, no, nothing. Thank you Charlie, you're done for the night."  
  
"Thank you Mr. President."  
  
Watching the young man leave Jed sat heavily in his chair and stared at the door separating his office from Leo's. Running his hands over a face that felt much too old to be his own some days, he considered the arguments. Leo's, he knew, were clouded by his intense loyalty to Jed. Not that Leo didn't have good points, Jed just couldn't trust him to give him all the arguments on this one. Josh's bias, on the other hand, ran the opposite way.  
  
"It matters a great deal," he said quietly to the empty room and wondered if maybe somewhere in the middle, between these two men, these two friends, lay the right path.  
  
~~  
  
*Henry II, King Of England: "The day those stout hearts band together is the day that pigs get wings."  
  
Eleanor of Aquitaine: "There'll be pork in the treetops come morning." 


End file.
